Some Testing Required

R.C. Sproul’s series of Saturday messages on the life of Joseph, the Old Testament patriarch, have been both fascinating and inspiring. Not long ago, my own pastor preached a series on the providence of God, in which he highlighted several Biblical characters, including Joseph. 

There are many reasons why believers ought to find Joseph’s story so helpful in our journey to sanctification. This man’s unique dreams, his privileged upbringing, the betrayal and enslavement at the hands of his own brothers, his reaction to being sold as a slave in another country, his faithfulness to the Lord when faced with sexual temptation, his loyalty and good will toward fellow prisoners, his wisdom and wise use of his God-given gifts, and the list goes on.

I was especially struck this morning by the way that testing figures throughout the story of Joseph. God appears to be putting Jacob and his family to the test by giving Joseph his bizarre dreams of future prominence. Obviously, Joseph’s older brothers react to this test in a purely negative way, seeing those dreams as simply a way their spoiled sibling is “lording it over” the rest of them. The very way they decide to “solve” this problem ironically ends up sending their hated brother into the path that eventually leads to the dreams’ fulfillment!

The next series of tests is directed at Joseph, at least primarily. His faith and his faithfulness are sorely tested through a gauntlet of crushing disappointments, all while he is choosing to do the right thing time after time. Repeatedly the devil seems to be whispering, “Just give in and accept the fact that God has abandoned you. There’s no use in remaining virtuous. Surrender is your only logical option...” Joseph seemed to be destined for obscurity by the dismal circumstances in which he found himself. Can’t you imagine the echoes of despair in his mind, like: “May as well have gone ahead and given in to Potiphar’s wife. Certainly, God wouldn’t have cared!”

But, no, Joseph somehow, with God’s help, waited patiently for the tide to turn. Patient endurance is certainly a virtue that this present culture of “gotta have it now” must reacquire. And it must be admitted that Christ’s church must also seek to major on such ideals if it is to become all our Master wants us to be!

All the while that Joseph is waiting, his father is also being tested. Jacob has seemingly lost his favorite, darling boy. But it’s interesting that when God requires him to suffer this great loss, Joseph’s father ends up favoring the younger of the two sons borne by his favorite wife. Benjamin becomes the new Joseph in Jacob’s life, to be coddled and protected at all costs. Rather than seeing his loss as an opportunity to sharpen his parenting skills, he falls back on his old habits of favoritism. And when Benjamin must accompany his older brothers to Egypt, he can only moan that everything seems to be against him!

I’m challenged by this negative example to have a more optimistic view as I face the future. May the Lord give me the trust in Him it will require to take future losses in stride, and see them as opportunities to grow and change for the better. We must realize that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, even as Job of old admitted. When we advance in years (and, hopefully, in wisdom) we often find that more gets taken away than we’re comfortable with. At those times, we need to recall the words God gave Paul concerning his “thorn in the flesh.”

Well, God’s grace was certainly “sufficient” for Joseph, especially when the day came for this former slave and long-time prisoner to be elevated to the role of Prime Minister in the land of his captivity! It amazes me that somewhere in the intervening years, Joseph apparently developed or otherwise obtained the gift of interpreting dreams, not just having them himself. Either that, or he was taking a tremendous leap of faith when he encouraged his fellow prisoners to share their visions with him. “Don’t interpretations belong to God?” he asked them, then urged, “Tell me your dreams.”

Tested and tried over and over, this young man refused to let the disappointments drive him deeper and deeper into himself, becoming a bitter, hermit-like malcontent. Rather, he remained outgoing and interested in the moods and the needs of others. God gave him a caring heart that shone out even when few people if any seemed to care about him. When the day came for him to leave the prison forever, he was prepared to set that caring heart loose to meet the needs of entire nations of people faced with a seemingly worldwide famine.

Then, the rest of Joseph’s story continues the testing theme in a beautiful, yet intriguing way: the way that this new Prime Minister of Egypt takes the unexpected opportunity to put his own family to the test! It seems to me that Joseph is absolutely justified in acting almost like the unseen hand of God Himself in the lives of his ten older brothers when they come before him to purchase life-sustaining grain for their families. All the while he is magnanimously meeting their physical needs, Joseph is giving them almost playful little tests to sound out their characters and get them to face their own suppressed guilt. His use of his own elevated position to manipulate their circumstances--all for their own good--may seem arbitrary to those used to democratic rule. But isn’t it a great picture of how Romans 8:28 is worked out in all our lives?

And at the end of the road that God’s providence lays out for you and me, there is a “land of Goshen,” a new heaven and new earth, waiting for those who remain faithful through all the testing and trials He planned for us along the way.

MNA

10/3/2020

Four Haiku

One

"Never" is a ghost,
ever lost in time and space,
ever chased by hope.

Two

Hunting man foresees
times of want and scarcity
that may never come.

Three

Hawk wings her foray
high above the land of life,
dropping swift with death.

Four

Dark it stalks its prey
while we mask our hunted nerves
with our viral posts.

by MNA
7/27/2020

hai·ku

/ˈhīˌko͞o/

noun

• 1.a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.

Change Hunger

Once upon a life I

arrived unclothed, to be

girded and swathed, cleaned

and pressed into servitude, 

meeting need & wish & whim

of the goggler in the glass:

one who all life long

yearned for a new reflection.

Following sires and siblings, I

wore handmedowns & hashtags,

hovering, wondering who and why,

and whither I ought to fly away--

land of never, planet past forever,

city with a skin-suited savior,

spired sanctuary chancel of song,

or a celebrated penman’s paradise?

But mirrors blur and darken

with the nodding and the waking,

and the plodding and the quaking fears

that heaven is but a phantom,

or piety just a pantomime performed

for force uncaring by poor devils daring

to face a shattered lookingglass

with pointless, mindless courage.

Though doubting, I am hoping

that transformation might be mined

in the lively tomb of neglected scrolls

where chiefs and kings were made

to morph from the curse of their births,

into chrysalis-breaking immortals,

by washing the feet of the lowly ones who

like me, are all longing for change.

MNA

7/19/2020

Ascent

Blessing comes down
in heavy drops
threatening to break
the fragile crust
I walk on.

Dangerous pleasures
set off sirens
athwart the straits
marking the passage
to my destiny.

Freshly freed captives
leave crippled footprints
on stones crossing
rivers in flux
flowing through me.

Dream gathers dark,
lost feathered figures
in cloistered chambers
closed as tight
as sleeping eyes.

Wishful words ascend
between cobalt skies
past celestial candles
burning black holes
in a Euclidean canvas.

Blessings break and
pleasures pass by...
captives cross and
dreams nearly deify
as my prayers defy gravity.


MNA
7/5/2020

What Do We Want from Our Pastors?

Looking back on the many different churches I’ve been a part of, the matter of church leadership has always been a major concern. Pastors, elders, deacons (and deaconesses), board members, teachers, and various other office-holders appear in my memory in varying shades of “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” The overarching question that I keep coming back to is: What does the Lord of the church want His church to be? Because that ought to determine the nature of the church’s leadership.

Shepherding the “flock of God” is, or should be, a high and holy calling. Jesus prayed, not only for His immediate band of apostles and other followers, but also for “those who will believe through their word.” For the church of the future, all the way down to you and me. And He prayed that the Father would “sanctify them by Thy truth; Thy word is truth.” Throughout the Scriptures, the ministry of that sacred, sanctifying word is of paramount importance.

If you’re like me, you’re in constant need of reminding about “the basics.” I’m apt to forget what the Bible is. Not simply a written record of the opinions of those who lived centuries ago in a far-off land. It’s exactly the opposite. The Bible is the eternal truth of the living, ruling, supreme, saving God of the universe. The Bible’s message is as contemporary and relevant as if it had been written this very morning. And its truth, its WHOLE truth, is to SANCTIFY God’s people.

Parts of the Scriptures are thrilling, inspiring, fascinating, heartwarming, challenging. Other parts are strange, obscure, tiresome, uncomfortable, terrifying. But Christians consider “all Scripture” to be “God-breathed...profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God should be complete, fully equipped for every good work.” Serious Christians should desire to learn and treasure and obey “the whole counsel of God.”

Perhaps you find yourself in a church that seems content with lighthearted “sermonettes” on a Sunday morning. Your pastor picks his topic based on what he deems to be the “felt needs” of his people. Or the current crisis facing society the previous week. Or maybe he follows the dictates of the church calendar that rotates through a set litany of topics each year. Many pastors appear eager to make their flocks feel better about themselves and life in general. They portray God as a fountain of happiness, but downplay His desire to SANCTIFY us (make us HOLY).

Really, I’ve found that, by and large, a church will get the kind of pastor it WANTS. And very often, the kind it DESERVES. Unless a group of believers is truly hungry to be taught ALL of the Scriptures, that group will end up with a pastor who is more of a “hireling” than a shepherd. One who feeds the sheep with just what will keep them barely alive, not make them all that God wants them to be.

When was the last time that your minister preached through an entire book of the Bible? How about one of the difficult ones like Ecclesiastes or Ezekiel or Hebrews? Does your preacher tend to cycle through a limited pool of topics or preach only from the New Testament or even just the four Gospels? Would you be willing to go deeper and broader in God’s truth, if only your leader was willing to lead the way?

God gave us 66 books for a good reason. He knew what His people needed from all eternity, and He gave it to us in the form of a magnificent Book! Do we want a pastor who is everybody’s “pal” and keeps us all feeling good Sundays with his jokes and anecdotes and pep talks? Or do we want a scholarly mind that grapples with the depth and breadth of holy Scripture in order to challenge His people to make strides spiritually, preparing them for an unknown future that might include persecution and call for strong, sanctified soldiers of the cross?

What DO we want from our pastors? Isn’t it time to voice those desires in prayer? Isn’t it high time to be serious about our faith, our Lord, our churches, our world?

MNA
7/3/2020

Not Knowing

How do we know what we know? Is it possible to know anything with absolute certainty? My five senses are continually sending me information about the world around me (including data about my own body), but can I trust those senses to give me accurate messages? Can I be certain that the workings of my own mind are sifting through that data in a reliable way?

Such questions don’t normally occur to us as we live our day-to-day lives. But philosophers have routinely discussed them for centuries. Epistemology is the study of the whole question of human knowledge and how it is acquired. Many thinkers have come to the conclusion that all we can be sure about beyond any doubt is that we are having sensations--sense perceptions. Others are convinced that the only real knowledge is found in the recesses of the mind--rational thought. Yet others conclude that it is a mixture of the two that determines what and how we know.

Personally, I’m convinced that the claim to “know” something beyond doubt is most usually a doubtful claim.

When God created men and women, He gave them a capacity to “know” Him and trust Him. They enjoyed fellowship with their Creator in a way that you and I only dream of. And yet, even in the Garden of Eden, doubt soon crept into the thinking of our first parents! It slithered into Paradise in the form of a devilish serpent.

The first human couple were tempted, doubted God’s goodness, and fell into sin, dragging their descendants in along with them. Ever since then, the whole question of “knowing” has been up for grabs. When Adam and Eve lost touch with their Creator, their whole basis for certainty about things was short-circuited. The world itself was no longer “very good” in the sense that God had first made it. Indeed, it was under a divine pronouncement of judgment--His curse. There was now no longer God’s unfettered benediction upon creation. Evil had entered, both in the world itself, in ourselves, and in our knowledge of it.

“You will be as gods,” the serpent had lied, “knowing good and evil.” The devil insists that there are really two sides to ultimate truth. God cannot be trusted. He’s not really as good as He is making out. He actually has a dark side. He’s holding back the good stuff for Himself, unwilling to share it with you humans. He’s a cosmic killjoy. His word can safely be questioned, doubted, even disobeyed. And “you will not surely die.”

This is why I normally meet a claim of absolute certainty with a degree of suspicion. There are a great number of false claims flying around. Ever since the Fall and the expulsion from Eden, people have had to be content to be BELIEVERS rather than KNOWERS.

What I mean is, since God the Creator-friend of Eden with whom Adam and Eve communed has become physically absent from us (until Jesus was born), any knowledge of Him has had to come to us “second-hand.” And human beings have learned to imitate the proverbial “man from Missouri” who stubbornly refuses to take anything at face value. While we continue to long for certainty and crave to be sure that we are sure, we find ourselves needing to TRUST some source or other in the HOPE of having that certainty.

“How do you KNOW that God exists?” Frankly, I cannot fully and finally answer that question to my own personal satisfaction. I have intellectual proofs and arguments that are convincing. I have had experiences and have read the Scriptures, and have even spoken to Him. But my own KNOWLEDGE of God’s reality is based on my FAITH in something, Someone, outside of myself.

It is interesting that the words “faith” and “knowledge” are used in the Bible in a somewhat interchangeable way. We are instructed to be true to the “faith of Christ” and to grow in the “knowledge of Christ.” Perhaps the growth from initial “faith” into “knowledge” is a progressive thing, becoming more and more firmly convinced through increased experience as a believer. But notice that those brought initially into Christ are referred to as BELIEVERS and not KNOWERS.

“Faith” is listed in the New Testament as one of the ninefold “fruit of the Spirit” and is in many ways superior to knowledge. If we consider the term “knowledge” to refer to something that is beyond any doubt, then we can see how faith would be a superior virtue. To go on believing something even though doubt is a possibility, must mean that that something holds a very high value to me. We experience this with our loved ones. I might doubt that my child can succeed in what he or she is attempting to do, but out of LOVE for that child, I go on BELIEVING.

I often wonder about the Lord Jesus and His mission here on planet earth to save His people from their sins. He was born into a Jewish peasant family and became a genuine human being with a body and a soul. But He was also fully God from the very beginning (John 1:1). His two distinct natures were never mixed or combined or confused with one another. So as a human being, Jesus was limited in his knowledge just as you and I are.

Never was any man more challenged to go on believing when it was possible to doubt God, than was Jesus Christ. As His death march to the Cross of Calvary drew closer and closer to His own personal “judgment day,” the Bible tells us that Jesus grew more and more agitated and emotion-laden. In his final hours with the twelve disciples, Jesus begged His heavenly Father for some other path than the horrors that awaited Him as the sacrificial lamb who’d be forsaken on that middle cross. To proceed with that assignment, Jesus had to fix His eyes firmly on “the joy set before Him.”

I just wonder if Christ “knew” with a sense of inhuman certainty that everything would turn out well--that crucifixion would be followed by resurrection? Or, like we, was he plagued with a sense of doubt even as His face felt the blows, His back felt the stripes, His shoulder bore the beam, His hands and feet felt the nails, and His voice screamed, “My God, why?”

If those words are true, if His mission really happened, and accomplished all it meant to, then all my doubts can be faced with an unflinching faith, and I can leave the ultimate KNOWING to my Heavenly Lord who knows ALL THINGS, and who reveals to me all I NEED to know.

Amen

MNA
5/22/2020

Heart on a Leash

I’m told that the pastor-theologian Jonathan Edwards was the keenest mind that America ever produced. He was one of the preachers God especially used during the 18th century to lead in the revival that came to be known as “The Great Awakening.” Edwards is also known for his thought and writing in the field of philosophy. One of his most important works in that field is his treatise on the freedom of the will.

Edwards insisted in that work that the human will (which he defined as “the mind choosing”) always makes its choice as it is directed by the person’s strongest desire at the moment. To put it in more modern lingo, the mind ALWAYS chooses by “listening to the HEART.”

You might object that you have often chosen a course of action because you were FORCED into it by your wife, your boss, your best friend, or the weather. Your heart wasn’t in it, it wasn’t at all what you DESIRED to do at the moment, but you chose it anyway.

But if you consider the exact circumstances of each choice, you will discover that Jonathan Edwards had it exactly right. When your boss told you to do something you didn’t care to do, you did it because you didn’t WANT to disappoint him or her, or simply because you WANTED to keep your job. Your conflicting desires at the moment came to a point where the strongest one won the battle. You gave in to your wife because you desired harmony with her more than your own way. You gave your wallet to the mugger because you desired your life more than your money. You cancelled the picnic on a rainy day because you didn't desire soggy sandwiches.

So, all of our mental decisions, and hence, our actual choices of action, are prompted by the desires of our hearts. The strongest desire ALWAYS WINS.

This is a challenging idea, at least in my mind. When I examine my own heart--I mean when I HONESTLY examine it, I find all kinds of selfish desires: wealth, ease, comfort, the respect of my fellow man, the love of my wife and children, self-esteem, and so on. And yeah, there are other darker desires lurking down deep that I don’t wish to even LOOK at, let alone acknowledge or make public.

One of my ongoing, overpowering desires involves expressing my love of beauty and creativity. I enjoy the ACT of creating, whether musically, visually, or poetically. I love to engage in, observe, revel in, immerse myself, lose myself in the realm of the beautiful. Sometimes I find myself desiring beauty so much, it is like a narcotic--like a golden idol I’m tempted to WORSHIP.

This is one of the many reasons I need the Lord in my life. I need His presence. I need His truth. I need His only begotten Son Jesus the Christ. I need the Holy Spirit’s promptings to grab my heart and SHAKE it. I need my DESIRE for HIM to grow...and grow...and grow.

I need my desires to pant for God like an exhausted deer longs for streams of water. I need God’s word to follow me through my day, poking me like a cattle prod when my darker desires start to belch their poison from far, far down in my soul. I need a ready antidote for that sinful venom when I taste it on my tongue.

Desire can be a wonderful, meaningful, glorious thing--as can creativity and beauty.

But I must never forget that the most UGLY and POISONOUS being that ever lived began as the most beautiful of the heavenly host. And one of the things he counted on in Eden was that the woman would see in that forbidden fruit a thing “desirous for making one wise.”

Desire is like an awesome, gorgeous animal. It’s a huge, splendid tiger. There is coming a day when all the tigers of humanity’s desires will finally be let loose to roam freely throughout the land, never to hunt or kill again in all God’s new creation… 

But that day isn’t here yet. For now, that huge, beautiful beast must be on a strong leash. I can’t afford to totally set it free. Because all of my sins began, and will continue to begin, at the point of my strongest desire.

Lord God, may your strong, wise, beautiful hand always hold tightly to my heart’s leash.

Amen.

MNA

5/3/2020